U.S. Retains Title of World’s Top Arms Dealer, Reaping Half of $80-Billion Global Sales in 2015

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WASHINGTON — The United States again ranked first in global weapons sales last year, signing deals for about $40 billion, or half of all agreements in the worldwide arms bazaar and far ahead of France, the No. 2 weapons dealer with $15 billion in sales, according to a new congressional study.

Developing nations continued to be the largest buyers of arms in 2015, with Qatar signing deals for more than $17 billion in weapons last year, followed by Egypt, which agreed to buy almost $12 billion in arms, and Saudi Arabia, with over $8 billion in weapons purchases.

Although global tensions and terrorist threats have shown few signs of diminishing, the total size of the global arms trade dropped to about $80 billion in 2015 from the 2014 total of $89 billion, the study found. Developing nations bought $65 billion in weapons in 2015, substantially lower than the previous year’s total of $79 billion.

The United States and France increased their overseas weapons sales in 2015, as purchases of U.S. weapons grew by about $4 billion and France’s deals increased by well over $9 billion.

Constraints on the expansion of foreign weapons sales are “due, in part, to the weakened state of the global economy,” wrote Catherine A. Theohary, a national security policy specialist at the Congressional Research Service.

“Some nations have chosen to limit their purchasing to upgrades of existing systems and …